experiment
by fall from stars
Summary: CHAPTERED—In this situation, I’ll have all the power, and you’ll have none. .PeterxElle. AU.


**A/N:** So the instant I start hearing in psychology class that we're talking about experiments regarding electrocution and sadism, I got so many vibes for a Peter/Elle story that I started writing dialogue in the margins of my notes. After some research, I'm now ready to give you this huge three-part story.

It's totally AU, and both Elle and Peter are powerless. This takes place in three different states over twenty years, involves a lot of experimentation and messing with timelines. So, if you're still interested? Welcome aboard, take a look around, leave a review if you like!

_Disclaimer:_ Heroes belongs to Tim Kring, among others, and NBC. The Milgram experiment was first conducted by Dr. Stanley Milgram, and all results of that experiment belong to him.

**Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent  
than the one that went before it,  
and wiser than the one that comes after it.****  
---  
George Orwell**

**experiment  
**  
**New Haven, Connecticut  
October 1, 1964  
(Peter is twenty; Elle is seventeen)**

Yale University is always very pretty, but it's even more so in the fall. So thinks Elle Bishop, seventeen years old, stunned nicely, as she always is, by the university where Daddy once went, and Daddy's daddy before him, and Daddy's daddy's daddy before him too.

Like a good little girl, she parks the car in the Ivy League yard and walks across a campus she knows she's not destined for. Yale is just for boys, pretty, smart boys who say and do clever things and find their wives at other neighboring universities.

In the shadow of Harkness Tower, Elle feels very young, babylike, saddled still with high school textbooks and leather 'round her neck. And all the boys around her look up from their philosophy textbooks to stare at her funny and wonder what business a girl has on an all-boys campus.

She makes faces at the ones who look at her too long, and when one of them, an ugly jock slumming around with his friends in Branford Court, asks, "Where do you think you're going?" she says, with poison in her eyes: "I'm on official business, little boy. So you had better stay out of my way."

And this seventeen-year-old girl who means business, who's young with a sharp smile, she saunters through the grand old Yale courtyard like she owns it, headed off to the experimental, headed off to the unknown. 

_---_

The experimenter is the one who introduces the teacher to the student: "Elle Bishop, this is Peter Petrelli."

And ooh, Elle wants to swoon, he's to die for with his pale skin and thin lips and his five inches on her and his pretty long hair that falls over his eyes. It's all she can do not to faint when Peter shakes her nervous hand.

"Mr. Petrelli is an undergraduate student of ours here," the experimenter elaborates, "and is currently studying in religious studies or some such other."

"Philosophy specifically regarding outlooks on faith and death, sir. For hospice worker education," Peter corrects.

Hospices. Care for the terminally ill, Elle remembers.

Quality rather than quantity of life. Helping the body learn till its last days on earth.

How noble, and brave, and selfless. And wonderful.

"What's your major?" Peter asks her, snapping her back to reality.

"I'm in high school, I'm not sure yet," is what she wants to say. She wants to say, "How could I possibly know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life?" She wants to say, "We all can't be as wonderful as you, Peter Petrelli."

Instead, she gives him her most brilliant smile and says, dying to impress, almost too simply, "Oh, just English." (It isn't too much of a lie; she's only ever gotten As in her English classes and she guesses that if she _had_ to go to college and major in something, English wouldn't be too bad.)

Peter smiles. The swooning feeling comes back again.

"My mother was an English major too. At Saint Joseph's," he says. With his approval, Elle starts to glow like a nuclear fire. "It teaches you a lot. You must actually like writing papers."

Elle's about to say she thinks papers aren't the only thing in life, hey, what're you doing on Friday night?

But the experimenter interjects and reminds them that they're on a schedule. They hook up wires and things to Elle's arm. And explain the process. Since Peter's the student, he'll be given questions. If he gets them wrong, he gets shocked, "which feels," the experimenter says, "a little something like this."

And _shit_, it hurts, it hurts and Elle's wincing and her mouth feels like it's wired shut. Every part of her feels like it's burning. She feels something beside her shift, a shadow, a shadow that belongs to Peter, and once the current stops his hands are on hers. And all she can feel is him, and, _and I must be dreaming_.

"Are you okay?" he asks, all empathy and charisma. She is so very flattered.

But she says of course she's fine, it takes more than that to bring her down.

"Now," says the experimenter, "let's begin."

---

It quickly becomes the most fun she's ever had.

She even tries to slip him up on purpose with his word pairs, tries to make it as difficult as possible. She speaks in what sounds like gibberish over the loudspeaker, and Peter, poor sweet Peter who doesn't have a chance, he's guessing most of the time.

Poor sweet Peter getting burnt hard by electricity, he begs her to stop. His heart, he says. It's not supposed to hurt like that, I'm not old, please, Elle, make it stop.

_What a big baby_, she thinks, with a frown.

_He can take more than that_, she thinks, with a smile.

And turns it up higher.

Nervously, the experimenter documents her progress. She isn't keeping to the chart the way everyone else did. Miss Bishop is a good subject in and of herself, the daughter of one of Yale's finest. They had all heard things, heard that she was such a nice girl.

And here she is, a sadist that nobody thought could exist in mainstream American society.

As soon as she shocks Peter with the first available level, the following shocks are always twice as intense. It continues on this dangerous trand, like clockwork, with Elle giggling _you're wrong again_ and Peter's screams rising to a crescendo.

The experimenter notices it then.

The next level she will hit is four hundred and fifty volts.

Something vile. Something lethal.

Peter continues to moan aloud; the experimenter is almost half-worried himself. It isn't stopping, he tells Elle. The pain, it's too much. Please. Let me go. Please.

But Elle, Elle who is a good and obedient little girl like her daddy raised her to be, she purrs a lie to Peter's wide-eyed face through the glass, "So sorry, angel. The professor says I have to continue."

Says she has to continue, "_so_ sorry, angel," and flips the switch to hit him hard with four hundred and fifty volts.

He screams and screams, and the whole time she's got a starlight smile that doesn't fade. A starlight smile, sadistic and strange, Elle's smile that sends shivers down the experimenter's spine.

She revels in the raw power that comes with hurting Peter, and she knows she's never gonna need marijuana or any of it again. Not when she can feel like this all on her own, with just a boy and just a dash of electricity.

When Peter's pretty screams fade away to nothing, Elle looks at the professor, not blinking.

"Can I check in on him?" she chirps. Her face falls when the professor quickly responds that there are doctors for that sort of thing.

"All I want is to say I'm sorry," she pouts, her plump, pink lower lip jutting out.

"I'm sorry, Miss Bishop," says the professor, more firmly this time, lab coat stirring and frown lines dark as permanent dye. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

There is no room for argument, and so instead of kicking the professor in the shin to get her way, she walks, briskly, towards the glass separating her and Peter.

"Miss Bishop, _please_!" the professor starts indignantly, but is quite stunned to see Elle's lips harmlessly kissing the glass in front of Peter's face goodbye (instead of one hundred and twenty pounds of Elle going through the window to do God-knows-what to that poor boy).

Peter's just as stunned as the professor is, and with one more unnerving smile to both her toy and her supervisor, Elle walks straight and away.

And the experimenter thanks his lucky stars this wasn't real, that Peter was faking this pain. Because if it was real, he would have a very difficult explanation ahead of him, and another tak with Peter's stern, cold mother.

If it was real, Peter Petrelli would already be dead.

Nothing lingers in the hallway.

Except for that silence.

And her laughter.

---


End file.
